With the increasing number of games available to be played on individual user devices, such as smartphones or tablets, there is an increase in the number of competitive games. Such competitive games enable users to play against each other, each user playing at their own device while following the progress of another user playing the game at their respective device. Such competitive games encourage user engagement, but there are significant challenges arising from the need to continually communicate information about user play at one device to another device. These devices may be connected via a communication network such as the Internet and there may be inherent latencies in conveying updates from one device to another. Even if this latency is in reality quite short, nevertheless, a player who is playing a game may be constantly waiting to receive an update from another player before he can continue his next move.
Another cause of latency perceived by a local player is the time it takes another player to consider and make his move.
The challenge addressed with the present disclosure is to overcome the problem of latency when playing competitive games on multiple remote computer devices.